The invention is related to deriving a contact name for a party that initiated a telephony communication, such as a telephone call.
When a calling party places a telephone call to a called party's telephony device, the called party's telephony device may be configured to try to identify the name of the calling party. Caller ID information that is received by the called party's telephony device can include the calling party's telephone number. The called party's telephony device performs a check to determine if the calling party's telephone number is present in a contact list that is maintained for the called party. If so, the telephone number may be associated with a name, and possibly also a business name. If the called party's telephony device finds that the calling party's telephone number is present in the called party's contact list, and that a name and/or business name is associated with that telephone number, the called party's telephony device may display that name and/or business name to the called party so that the called party knows who is calling.
The called party's telephony device also is often configured to keep a log of all incoming telephone calls and outgoing calls. The call log will typically list the telephone number of each incoming telephone call, along with the time that the call was received, and possibly information about a duration of the incoming call. If the called party's telephony device was able to identify a contact name for the calling party, the contact name may also appear in the call log.
When a called party's telephony device receives an incoming telephone call, and is unable to locate the calling party's telephone number in the called party's contact list, then the called party's telephony device will typically display only the calling party's telephone number to the called party when the call is first received. Also, because the called party's telephony device was unable to locate a contact name associated with the calling party's telephone number, any entry in a call log for the incoming telephone call also will lack a contact name.
It would be desirable to have some alternate means for identifying a contact name associated with a calling party when a lookup in the called party's contact list fails to yield a contact name.